January 25, 1998

FORBEANSIE, THESHORTGOODBYE

By EVAN HUNTER

T IS 1:47 on the morning of July 16, 1912. Even now, not a breeze is stirring. It has been one of the hottest summers on record, and it is about to get hotter.
A 1909 Packard touring car pulls to the curb outside the Metropole Cafe at 43d Street and Broadway. At this hour, the place is a hangout for actors, promoters and "East Side types," a euphemism for the young immigrant
owners of two-bit gambling houses below 14th Street.

Three of the men who step out of the Packard to take up positions on the sidewalk are Jewish gangsters. The fourth is Italian. They have colorful nicknames, Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louie, Dago Frank and Whitey Lewis, but make no mistake;
they are killers. Their intended victim is a small-time gambler named Herman (Beansie) Rosenthal, who has made headlines in The New York World by accusing Lieut. Charles Becker of the New York City Police Department of demanding
payoffs and kickbacks in return for police protection.

Lieutenant Becker, one bad cop.

Becker, a huge and hugely handsome man, had been appointed by Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo to head up Special Squad No. 1, the first of three strong-arm units created to eliminate the illegal gambling, prostitution and graft then endemic to the
city. Using the power of his new position to expand upon his already dubious activities, Becker swaggered through the underworld like an immaculately tailored ambassador of malicious goodwill, palms outstretched whenever they
aren't clenched into fists.

The Metropole's doors are open to catch a stray breeze. Electric fans whir and the rolling rhythms of ragtime spill onto the sidewalk, where the four men wait in deadly earnest. A messenger ambles in, finds Rosenthal reading
about himself in the morning paper and says someone outside wants to see him.

Afloat on the heady perfume of his own celebrity, Rosenthal marches out into the early morning dark -- and is cut down by a close-range volley of bullets from four separate guns. One gunman leans over Rosenthal's body, blows
away a goodly part of his skull and whispers, "Hello, Herman; goodbye, Herman," the punch line to a grisly murder that will command the public imagination for the next several years.

It was not the arrest and execution of the four gunmen that caused the intense interest. In New York, then as now, gangsters slaying gangsters was an activity usually greeted with indifference: good riddance to bad rubbish. It
was, instead, the arrest and trial of Lieutenant Becker for the murder that captured the attention and led to a fierce debate.

It was District Attorney Charles Seymour Whitman's contention that Becker had ordered the murder because little Beansie Rosenthal had first told The World (tantamount to telling the world) and next told the District Attorney
that the corrupt police lieutenant was his partner in a 45th Street gambling house. Becker's trial, then, focused on whether a Harlem meeting between him and the four killers had taken place.

In short, was Rosenthal's murder the resolution of a quarrel among gamblers, or had Becker hired the killers to silence a witness against him? The jury believed he had, and Becker was convicted and sentenced to death in the
electric chair. But that was not the end of the matter.

On Feb. 24, 1914, almost two years after the murder, the Court of Appeals -- upholding the defense lawyers' contention that there was indeed fresh evidence on the disputed Harlem meeting -- granted Becker a new trial. Again,
he was found guilty and again sentenced to death. Whitman, who was then Governor of New York State, refused to pardon the man he had relentlessly prosecuted, maintaining to the end that Becker was guilty and the sentence just.

HARLES BECKER died at 5:53 A.M. on a Friday some three years after Rosenthal was killed. "The giant died hard," The World reported, perhaps because
it had taken a full nine minutes to electrocute him.

Americans, particularly New Yorkers, have short attention spans. From time to time, all 12 of the city's newspapers rehashed the case, dwelling repeatedly on that disputed Harlem meeting. But eventually, even the newspapers
lost interest.

Becker? New Yorkers asked.

Rosenthal?

Goodbye, Herman.

Evan Hunter's new mystery as Ed McBain, "The Last Best Hope," will be published in March (Warner).